


This Rose of Pearl-Coated Infinity

by Goldmonger



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Other, Self-Reflection, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 16:01:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8378521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: When Rick slept at night, it was after a cycle of reflecting upon some of the darkest moments of his life. Not by choice.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written in a tear-stained haze at 2am. I'm really going to miss Glenn, guys.

_And the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale._

_\-  Revelation 6:13_

 

 

 

 

“So… fatherhood. Big responsibility.”

Glenn shot Rick a nervous smile, his hair falling into his eyes as he wrestled with the wooden plank he was trying to get above waist-level.

“Maggie keeps saying I’ll be a natural. I’m not so confident.”

Rick hid his smirk, shouldering one stack of sawn timber boards and heading over to lend a hand. He picked up the other end of the plank with his free arm and gave Glenn a wink, just to see him roll his eyes.

They started walking towards Alexandria’s sole watchtower, faltering only when they came upon the uneven patches of long grass that were nearer to the fence. Nobody brought their lawnmowers up here, scared away by the intermittent rasping on the other side of the cold-rolled steel and hardy sheet metal.

The wooden girders of the tower were almost repaired from the Wolves’ attack, which left Rick rather disappointed. He’d agreed to help Glenn with the restoration automatically, aware of the necessity and of Glenn’s fright when the instability of the structure had led to Maggie nearly falling prey to a ravenous herd. It was his odd job between runs, though he knew Spencer and Tara were doing a good chunk of the work too. He looked forward to doing it, finding the methodical aspect of it calming. Tedium was a rarity and a blessing for any of them, but he craved it.

They set the planks down next to the tower with a grunt, and straightened up with a few ominously creaking joints. Rick had more than a few of them anyway, he thought sourly, as something popped satisfyingly in his back. The years weren’t slowing down for him.

“You’ll do fine,” he told Glenn lightly, as they headed towards the communal garage for the required tools. “Being a parent is the best thing in the world, trust me. I mean, it gets hard sometimes,” he said, frowning at the sight of Carl strolling between houses with Enid, their heads bent together. Judith had clearly been figuratively dumped on Denise’s doorstep then.

Glenn was watching him with a trace of amusement. “The teenage years are a long way away, thank god,” he said. “A baby, though. A newborn, in my butterfingers.” He laughed once. “You know the longest I was able to keep a goldfish alive was eight days, before?”

“Hopefully you’ll have a longer attention span in this instance,” replied Rick mock-seriously. Glenn began chewing his lip worriedly, so Rick had to nudge him playfully. “Kidding,” he said. “Maggie tends to know what she’s talking about. You’ll be a great father, Glenn. Just be there, and love them, and everything else will fall into place.”

He gave Rick one of his sunny grins, the kind that Rick thought had been spirited away with the other fleetingly good things since Hershel’s farm.

“I love her so much,” he blurted, like it was a confession. “Sometimes I can barely breathe when I think about how much I love her. Maggie with my kid…” He laughed euphorically, tilting his head back like he needed to let the sky or the whole planet know.

“Maybe I _can_ do this,” he said, still gazing up at bare blue. After a moment he turned to Rick, eyes bright. “You know, I think I might be able to do it for as long as I live.”

 

*

 

When Rick slept at night, it was after a cycle of reflecting upon some of the darkest moments of his life. Not by choice.

There was no rhyme or reason to it, either. He remembered waking up cold and alone, stumbling over the detritus of the end of the world, his family vanished. He remembered the weight of Shane’s dying body against him, both inert and oppressive – things he had never before associated with the man. He remembered Carl’s stiffened back, his son walking away as he tried desperately to keep up. Discovering there was something in all their veins that would never let the dirt on their graves settle, short of a vicious lobotomy. His baby, his boy, both covered in his wife’s blood. Little girls with a desiccated faces. A mouthful of someone else’s flesh. The tantalising smell of barbecued human meat. Hershel, dying in front of him. Tyreese, dying in front of him. Beth, dying in front of him. Glenn –

The road was blurry. He blinked fiercely, wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. _No sanctuary_ , he had written on a signpost once. Prescient. Suicidal scientists, his manic best friend, a man driven mad by grief and power, cannibals, claimers, wolves, _saviours_ … They had all taken from him any possibility of home, of safety. For years now he’d been floating, blind, deaf or at sea. He could sense only by touch; this was his gun, this was his holster, they were his family, those were his children. When they fell away, or were pulled away, he was left floundering, wondering how it could have happened. Did he not hold on tight enough? Did he hold on too tightly?

They were going to find a car for Maggie and Sasha, so they could go to the doctor at the Hilltop. Then he would tell the others – the ones at Alexandria who never saw Negan, or felt his foul breath hot on their face – he would tell them how it was. How it would be from now on. He would hug his daughter, hold his son and Michonne, apologise with his eyes. And he would go to be alone. Carve out Negan’s eulogy on his forearm, until he ran as red as they had.

_They have Daryl_ , he’d told Maggie. He should have gone on. _They have everything. After all we’ve lost, there’s still so much more to lose._  

**> hey you. dumbass. yeah, you in the tank.<**

At some point, Michonne’s hand appeared on his shoulder, squeezed briefly and disappeared again. He could hear Eugene sniffling over the shuddering wheels of the RV, and if he strained his ears hard enough, Maggie’s soft gasps too, muffled as though buried in someone’s embrace. Five miles to the Alexandria Safe-Zone.

**> you cosy in there?<**

In a dream he had once, the Governor had Carl’s face when he beat him to a pulp. Beat him to shit.

In another, he played hide-and-seek with Judith, and found a pile of bones and nothing else.

Two nights ago he’d dreamt of Andrea’s blonde head bobbing in front of him, laughing as she dangled a mermaid necklace from her fingers, letting him chase her as he shouted her Miranda rights. He couldn’t picture her face when he woke up. He wondered if he’d forget the rest of them if they went the same way, violent and sudden. Surely an end like that should make their last minutes and drawn expressions indelible, like a scar.

His hands were starkly white where they were clenched on the wheel, trees and fields and asphalt and maybe even Santa-fucking-Clause speeding past him like nothing, nothing.

“They’re screwing with the wrong people”, he recalled telling his group as they waited to be slaughtered by Gareth and his thugs. Negan would have laughed at that. Rick felt a sharp pain in his stomach and realised he was retching.

After a second he managed to swallow down the watery bile, not checking to see if his lapse had gone unnoticed by the others. Three miles to the Alexandria Safe-Zone.

He should tell them he’s sorry, he thought sluggishly, stupidly. He should let Maggie rage and rant at him, let her unleash her pain on him. He brought them there. He was the reason for the two puddles of blood that used to be their friends, their family. He was the reason Daryl was taken. He was the reason his son had to be the strong one. He rubbed his face agitatedly and it came away stained crimson. Icy sweat trickled down the back of his neck, making him shiver.

_How many people have you killed?_

_Counting your own?_

_Too many._

Bob had held his hand, smiled sadly at Rick’s baby. Tyreese had died looking at the sky, listening to the radio, peaceful. Deanna had been left to reanimate and get shot by the last surviving member of her family. Noah, Amy, Jim, T-Dog, Sophia, Dale, Lori, Lori, Lori.

Abraham.

So many dead, and for nothing. An endless queue of bodies that blocked their path, let them grapple with one another like the Romans and the Carthaginians until one side was culled.

But the table.

The trestle table, laid out heartily for something significant, a holiday or a birthday, or just because they were alive and wanted to celebrate that – it didn’t feel like a fantasy. It didn’t even feel like a dream, but a projection of their luckier selves in some other reality, somewhere Negan was never born or Rick was a little faster, a little smarter. He wanted it so badly his chest hurt.

He wasn’t even asking for what was taken from them before, the people or the hope. Just what they had twelve hours ago. A kindness.

One mile to the Alexandria Safe-Zone. The vehicle was silent but for the rattling rims.

They’d get a car ready, get the women on the way to that obstetrician. Maggie and the baby would be all right. Her belly would swell with life, and they would all see that there was a future to come after this. There was.

There was?

If the child was to live then it would have to be under Negan’s thumb, under the threat of death or torture outside of servitude. Was that a life?

A foolish question. The kind of question that would have earned him a sorrowful look from Glenn. Regroup, he’d say. Get your people healthy. Get Daryl back. Get Morgan, Carol, Jesus, whoever you can, and form a plan. Nothing rash. Rash actions are how you get killed.

His skin was crawling. Were there ants in that clearing? His whole body felt as though it was on fire. Rick twitched, inhaling too sharply.

_Glenn, forgive me._ Glenn who looked ahead, never back. Glenn who had a whole life to lead. Glenn who saved him. Saved him.

Jenner had tried to warn him once, solemn and balefully honest. The day will come, he'd said, unblinkingly, knowingly. 

 He knew he was attracting Michonne’s concerned stare, which put him even more on edge. The road and the familiar clump of cars and spears in the distance looked like a watercolour painting as his eyes streamed.

“We’re here,” he said, his throat raw. Someone was opening the gate, slowly. Three trapped walkers hissed and moaned voicelessly as the RV drove past their impaled bodies.

Then Michonne’s hand was on the nape of his neck, her fingers threading through his hair. They pulled into the driveway, and Rick took the keys out of the ignition. Someone lumbering – Eugene – was heading for the doorway, the others close behind him. Carl fidgeted for a moment in Rick’s peripheral vision, then departed as well. Michonne stayed where she was.

“What’s going to happen,” he asked her tonelessly, feeling vaguely like an idiot. Worse, like an idiot who had previously believed himself to be cunning. How poetic, like some sick version of a Greek fable. The fox outsmarted the stork. The stork bashed the other foxes’ brains in.

“We’ll get strong again,” she said softly, her touch like a balm to his exhausted, sore body. “We’ll come back, Rick. We always do.”

“Not all of us,” he whispered, watching Maggie, supported by Aaron and Sasha, greet the approaching Alexandrians with stooped heads. He watched as Spencer’s face grew taut and pale at Aaron’s recount, his neighbours and other onlookers clutching their mouths, their chests, crowing in horror. Hands reached for Maggie, for Carl, suddenly grieving as a community for lost members.

“What we have is enough,” said Michonne, her voice barely wavering. “It’ll have to be.”

He reached back and covered her hand with his own, then stood up slowly, painstakingly, like an old man. He was still a leader to some people, after all. He should remedy that.

Daryl. Maggie. Carl. Judith.

_Still so much more to lose._

_*_

“Did you have a favourite pizza?”

Daryl shrugged under Rick’s incredulous gaze, but Glenn snorted at the question. “Nah. Three years of bringing it door-to-door and you get sick of the stuff.”

“Sounds boring.”

“Mostly I just met a lot of stoners. It wasn’t high-octane, I’ll give you that.”

“What do you – _did_ you want to do?” enquired Rick, feeling oddly awkward about his slip. Glenn didn’t seem to have noticed it.

“I wanted to be an engineer. Then a teacher. Then a journalist. Latest thing was a videogame developer.” He sighed. All that indecision led to me flunking out of college, and getting an ‘in-between job’ while I figured stuff out. It lasted longer than I thought, obviously.”

“And what, the world ending was your out?” Daryl asked, plucking absently at the string of his crossbow. Hershel wouldn’t let them keep weapons in the house, so they’d constructed a measly armoury in the RV. Daryl preferred to keep his things casually on his person, like he was getting ready to leg it. It was in contrast to Shane, who fingered his single Colt constantly, like he was checking to make sure he hadn’t dropped it. Daryl was nowhere near as openly jumpy.

“An out, a terrible way to quit, whatever,” sighed Glenn. Carl snored loudly, zipped into a sleeping bag like a burrito and curled against his mother. Most of the group was asleep by now, the fire getting low, though the night was still warm. Glenn and Rick’s slightly tipsy argument about who should be on watch had ended when Daryl ambled over and demanded a swig of whatever Glenn was drinking. The lazy conversation that followed had meandered for half an hour now. It was the lightest Rick had felt in months, putting aside the distinct unease he felt in the presence of his wife or Shane, and the fruitless search for the poor Sophia. At the thought of her, Rick scanned the treeline from where they sat, really out of habit. In the dead of night it was useless, of course; pitch-black and utterly unforgiving.

“Like the world,” Shane might have said, spitting on the ground and glaring.

The stars spun constellations above them that a more fortunate or more alert person would have cooed at. Rick debated internally whether to wake Carl up to see it or not. Lori would complain he didn’t get enough sleep as it was, so perhaps not.

“Pineapple and ham,” murmured Glenn contentedly, his arms folded behind his head as he dozed. Rick supposed that meant he won the argument. “That’s my favourite pizza.”

“Pineapple,” growled Daryl in disgust, and laid back himself, his head pillowed by his jacket. “Fuck’s sake.”

Glenn just laughed. “Maggie – uh, Hershel’s eldest daughter, you know – it’s her favourite. I’d have brought her pineapple and ham pizza from the city if she’d ordered it.” He smiled, his eyes still closed. “Hell, I’d probably go get one for her right now if she asked.”

“Pathetic,” said Daryl, and Rick found the corner of his mouth quirking too.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Part 1 of this takes place somewhere between 6x09 and 6x12. Part 2 is set just after 7x01. Part 3 is set somewhere between 2x04 and 2x06.
> 
> \- Title from Aberjhani's 'Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black'. Full quote:
> 
> "This rose of pearl-coated infinity transforms  
> the diseased slums of a broken heart  
> into a palace made of psalms and gold."
> 
> [Basically, I think Rick still has a bit of hope in him, however wrecked it may be now, or has been in the past. It's what has always separated him from people like the Governor and Shane.]


End file.
